Why Do Cats Get Stuck in Trees?

So why do cats get stuck in trees? If they can climb up, why can’t they climb
down?

The simple answer is that they actually can climb
down. The problem is that many cats just
don’t know how. If they climb down backwards
-- that is, butt-first -- they will be just fine. It’s slow, awkward and scary for them, but they can do it. The natural tendency,
however, is for many cats to come down head-first. Head-first is how they go everywhere, so it
is quite natural to try to go down the tree that way.

Cat’s claws curve toward the back, and that works well
for climbing up the tree. They simply hook
their claws in the cracks of the bark of the tree and pull themselves up. But when they try to come down head-first,
those claws are now curving upward and are almost useless for holding them
securely to the tree. When the cat tries
it, he easily senses that he is about to fall, so he pulls back. Every time he tries to go down head-first,
the result is the same. He either does not know to go down backward, or he is too afraid to do it. He doesn’t know
what else to do, so he simply stays where he is. He may walk laterally out to the end of a
branch or he may go higher, but he won’t come down because he knows he will
fall. In some sections of the tree where
the branches are closely spaced, he may jump down from one branch to another,
but when the distance is too great, he reaches an impasse.

You may have seen a squirrel or raccoon going down a tree
head-first and wondered why they are able to do that but not cats. Squirrels and raccoons have a special
advantage that cats don’t have. Their
hind feet have a joint that allows them to rotate their feet backwards so that
they can point their claws downward regardless of the orientation of their
body. Cats cannot do that; their hind feet
always point to their front, so if they want to climb down, they must do so
backward.

If you want to see a video of a cat demonstrating how to
climb down correctly, I highly recommend this one. It is a tense, nail-biting experience to watch as this bold
cat shows how it is done.

“Have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?”

There are many people – even people of authority who
should know better – who will tell you that cats always come down on their
own. All you have to do is wait and not
worry. They are wrong. Dead wrong.
The way they most often express this is with the question, “Have you
ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?” I
don’t know how this question became so popular, but if you ever ask a bunch of
people for advice about a cat in a tree, someone is certain to assault you with
it. To be clear, this is more of a
statement than a question, and it is a most infuriating one for several reasons.

The implication, of course, is that the cat has not come
down yet because he wants to be there or is simply not yet motivated enough to
come down. Once he decides to come down,
he will. Contradicting this absurd
assertion are the facts that for days, if not weeks, at a time, the cat is
going without food, water (if it doesn’t rain), a place to pee or poop, and a
comfortable, safe place to even sleep without fear of falling, often while
enduring uncomfortable temperatures and/or rain or snow. Why would a cat choose to do that? Are they suggesting that this is the cat
equivalent of some kind of fasting ritual?
One recent winter, we had two cold fronts that brought lots of rain and
low temperatures in the teens. There was
a cat here that was stuck in a tree for two weeks during that time. There is no way anyone can sanely claim that the
cat enjoyed itself or was simply not motivated to come down. It is not motivation that cats need;
rather it is a sense of safety.

To be fair, it is definitely true that sometimes a cat
will come down on its own. We don’t
usually know how they come down, but we
do know it does happen. They may finally
summon the courage to jump, they may fall asleep and fall, they may throw
caution to the wind and just come down head-first holding on as best they can,
or something may happen that scares them into jumping. We don’t know for sure, and the cats never
talk about it. But just because it
happens sometimes does not mean it happens every time. Even if it did, would it not be more humane and sensible to rescue them to at least shorten their period of suffering?

Another implication of the cat skeleton statement is that
they have done an exhaustive investigation by climbing a large number of trees
over a significant period of time looking for cat skeletons and found
none. I don’t know of anyone who has
done that, so we should certainly ask them if they have and expect to see them
squirm with discomfort when they admit they have not. But let us assume someone has done that
investigation and found no cat skeletons.
We should also ask how many bird skeletons they found too. We certainly know that there are a large
number of birds, that birds spend a significant amount of their time in trees,
and that birds die, so we should expect to find a large number of bird
skeletons in trees. If any are found,
then we would need to extrapolate from the number of bird skeletons, which we
would expect to find in large numbers, the number of cat skeletons, which we would not
normally expect to find. So, for
example, if we find a dozen bird skeletons among all the tens of thousands of
birds that exist in trees, then how many cat skeletons would you expect to find
knowing so few cats normally spend any significant time in trees as compared to
birds? I would estimate none.

We should also painfully consider what happens to a cat on
his last day in the tree. The cat is
dehydrated, sleep-deprived, exhausted and no longer has the strength to hold
on, so the most likely outcome is that he will fall, probably while sleeping. Attacks by vultures are also likely and known to occur. Otherwise, the cat might die in the tree and his body may become lodged in a crotch of the
tree, only to be dislodged later by vultures or the rain and movement of the branch in high winds. Or, his body may decompose there and the bones would fall one by one over time. So, even when the cat dies in his tree prison, it is unlikely that his skeleton will remain in the tree.I can understand the attractiveness of this cat skeleton
response. It’s simple; it is an easy
answer for someone who has never given any thought to the issue or does not want
to deal with a difficult problem that makes them feel helpless. It gives the user a sense of knowledge, authority or
even superiority while they give glib reassurance to the cat owner. But these psychological benefits to the user
come at a high cost to both the cat and the cat owner as both suffer even
longer than needed with this encouragement to delay the rescue.

So let’s put this cat skeleton response to rest in the graveyard of forgotten expressions, shall
we.

BiasThere are those who will say that my arguments here cannot be trusted because I am biased. My response to that is this: bias is irrelevant. A statement is either true or false regardless of the person who said it. The question to ask is not, "Is he biased? " Rather, the proper question to ask is, "Is this true?"The information I present here is all true to the best of my knowledge and experience, but I always recognize that I can be mistaken. For that reason, I always welcome new information that gives me reason to re-evaluate the positions I have taken. If you have such information, please send it to me, and I will certainly be eager to evaluate it. If I learn that I have been wrong, I will correct it here. If I learn that every rescue I have done has been a complete waste of time, then I will stop doing them. I am always open to learning where I am wrong.Are you?